JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION

First published with the signature Z in The Monthly Repository in 1836. A quotation from a Dictionary of all Religions followed the title on the first publication, but is here transferred to the notes.

There 's heaven above, and night by night

I look right through its gorgeous roof;

No suns and moons though e'er so bright

Avail to stop me; splendor-proof

I keep the broods of stars aloof:

For I intend to get to God,

For 't is to God I speed so fast,

For in God's breast, my own abode,

Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed,

I lay my spirit down at last.

I lie where I have always lain,

God smiles as he has always smiled;

Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,

Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled

The heavens, God thought on me his child;

Ordained a life for me, arrayed

Its circumstances every one

To the minutest; ay, God said

This head this hand should rest upon

Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun.

And having thus created me,

Thus rooted me, he bade me grow,

Guiltless forever, like a tree

That buds and blooms, nor seeks to know

The law by which it prospers so:

But sure that thought and word and deed

All go to swell his love for me,

Me, made because that love had need

Of something irreversibly

Pledged solely its content to be.

Yes, yes, a tree which must ascend,

No poison-gourd foredoomed to stoop!

I have God's warrant, could I blend

All hideous sins, as in a cup,

To drink the mingled venoms up;

Secure my nature will convert

The draught to blossoming gladness fast:

While sweet dews turn to the gourd's hurt,

And bloat, and while they bloat it, blast,

As from the first its lot was cast.

For as I lie, smiled on, full-fed

By unexhausted power to bless,

I gaze below on hell's fierce bed,

And those its waves of flame oppress,

Swarming in ghastly wretchedness;

Whose life on earth aspired to be

One altar-smoke, so pure!—to win

If not love like God's love for me,

At least to keep his anger in;

And all their striving turned to sin.

Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white

With prayer, the broken-hearted nun,

The martyr, the wan acolyte,

The incense-swinging child,—undone

Before God fashioned star or sun!

God, whom I praise; how could I praise,

If such as I might understand,

Make out and reckon on his ways,

And bargain for his love, and stand,

Paying a price, at his right hand?

PICTOR IGNOTUS
FLORENCE, 15—

I could have painted pictures like that youth's

Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No bar

Stayed me—ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!

—Never did fate forbid me, star by star,

To outburst on your night with all my gift

Of fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunk

From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift

And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk

To the centre, of an instant; or around

Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan

The license and the limit, space and bound,

Allowed to truth made visible in man.

And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,

Over the canvas could my hand have flung,

Each face obedient to its passion's law.

Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue;

Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,

A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace,

Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her brood

Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its place;

Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up,

And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved,—

O human faces, hath it spilt, my cup?

What did ye give me that I have not saved?

Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!)

Of going—I, in each new picture,—forth,

As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell,

To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, or North,

Bound for the calmly satisfied great State,

Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went,

Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight,

Through old streets named afresh from the event,

Till it reached home, where learned age should greet

My face, and youth, the star not yet distinct

Above his hair, lie learning at my feet!—

Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked

With love about, and praise, till life should end,

And then not go to heaven, but linger here,

Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend,—

The thought grew frightful, 't was so wildly dear!

But a voice changed it. Glimpses of such sights

Have scared me, like the revels through a door

Of some strange house of idols at its rites!

This world seemed not the world it was before:

Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped

... Who summoned those cold faces that begun

To press on me and judge me? Though I stooped

Shrinking, as from the soldiery a nun,

They drew me forth, and spite of me ... enough!

These buy and sell our pictures, take and give,

Count them for garniture and household-stuff,

And where they live needs must our pictures live

And see their faces, listen to their prate,

Partakers of their daily pettiness,

Discussed of,—"This I love, or this I hate,

This likes me more, and this affects me less!"

Wherefore I chose my portion. If at whiles

My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint

These endless cloisters and eternal aisles

With the same series, Virgin, Babe and Saint,

With the same cold calm beautiful regard,—

At least no merchant traffics in my heart;

The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward

Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart:

Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine

While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke,

They moulder on the damp wall's travertine,

'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke.

So, die my pictures! surely, gently die!

O youth, men praise so,—holds their praise its worth?

Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry?

Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?